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Companies Linked to Japanese Whaling; Conservationists Call for Action

Tuesday, 18 December, 2007

Yarmouth Port, MA

In letters released today, Humane Society International, the Environmental
Investigation Agency and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW - www.ifaw.org) urged three
Japanese seafood companies and their U.S. subsidiaries to use their influence
with the Japanese government to end the imminent slaughter of nearly 1,000
whales in a whale sanctuary around Antarctica. Today’s action coincides with the
arrival of the Japanese whaling fleet in the international sanctuary.

Japanese seafood giants Nippon Suisan, Kyokuyo and Maruha jointly owned and
operated Japan’s whaling fleet for decades and devised a plan to significantly
expand Japanese whaling in the 2007/2008 whaling season. Under the plan, first
announced in 2005, more than 1,000 whales will be hunted in the internationally
recognized Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary over the next three months, including
50 endangered fin whales, 50 humpback whales and 935 minke whales. Later in
2008, Japan will continue to target endangered whales in the North
Pacific.

All three Japanese companies have previously stated they
would stop selling whale products after international pressure was exerted on
their U.S. subsidiaries and trading partners. However, the companies have
refused to shut down the whaling fleet, or withdraw their expanded whaling plan.
Instead, the companies enabled the plan’s continuation by passing their shares
to the whaling institute, (the Institute of Cetacean Research-ICR) and
non-profit entities.

“It is not enough that these companies are no
longer actively participating in the slaughter; they are obligated to make
amends by actively trying to stop the whale hunt altogether,” said Kitty Block,
vice president of Humane Society International. “Twenty-plus years of corporate
irresponsibility for killing these endangered animals does not end overnight
simply because they hand off the business to someone else to continue the
slaughter. Our groups have more than 12 million supporters who expect these
companies to clean up the mess they made.”

“These companies have a
lot of dead whales to answer for,” said Patrick Ramage, global whale program
manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “They set this plan in
motion and put the humpbacks, fins and other whales in the gunsights. They must
act now to stop what they started and prevent the illegal killing of these
protected species.”

“We have appealed to Nippon Suisan, Kyokuyo and
Maruha to close their whaling fleet and end their 20-year effort to undercut the
ban on commercial killing of whales,” said Allan Thornton, President of the
Environmental Investigation Agency. “They rejected our appeals to close their
whaling fleet and conspired to allow the hunt not only to continue but to be
expanded to kill endangered humpback and fin whales.”